I'll Steal Home For Christmas
by EzraTheBlue
Summary: One Christmastime, Gojyo and Banri come upon an abandoned house. Gojyo hasn't had a house in years, but Banri knows just what to do with it. Rated for language.


**I'll Steal Home for Christmas**

 **Author Notes:** Written for LePetitErik for the FYeahSaiyuki exchange! ... somehow, we ended up swapping... Well, happy tidings, friend!

 **Disclaimer:** The characters are not mine.

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"Hup!" With one swift jerk of his leg and a clatter of shattering glass, Banri put his foot through the windowpane, and Gojyo whooped and cheered behind him as he lifted the window up. He mock-bowed and held his hand out in an 'after-you' gesture. Gojyo, hardly sixteen and not quite a man, with his slim shoulders, wiry arms, and thin hips, slid through the gap with ease. He tumbled off of a counter and into cobwebs. Banri was laughing at him as he swore and yanked at the tangles of dust catching in the length of his unwashed hair, but rolled over. He regretted it in an instant, and quickly moved to pick the dust off of himself. He was down to his last good shirt, because he'd lost the last one in a fight and the one before had been torn up to patch Banri's torn up arm from trying to get through some barbed wire. If this one got stained, he was going to have to live with it.

That was what life with Banri was like. Take what you got and live with it.

Winter had come on like a stampede, thundering through the valley and crushing the last scraps of fall that had clung through the first half of December. Even now, the trees were burdened with piles of snow. If Gojyo had given a damn about Christmas, he would have thought it was a pretty white Christmas. As it stood, he hadn't really had anything like that except the storybooks Jien would read him. He hadn't had time for worrying about fairy stories or pretty things, just getting from one place to the next, food in his belly, and knives off his throat. Banri was good for that.

He'd been following Banri's heels for a few months, ever since he'd cornered him in a street fight but stopped just before he put his fist through Gojyo's jawbone, then laughed and picked him off the ground. He'd gone from sleeping in doorways to crashing in card rooms, and he'd eaten better in the last few weeks than he had since he left the last place he'd called home. Banri would vanish sometimes, but he'd come back after a few days, and life was good. It was good enough for now, so there was no reason for him to question what Banri wanted with this place. It didn't mean he wouldn't wonder, but he was in it for all the marbles.

He dusted himself, keenly feeling his own ribs through his threadbare denim jacket, and tiptoed through the house. He couldn't hear anyone, and Banri had sworn he'd cased it a few times and was damn sure the place was abandoned. It seemed like Banri's word had proven bond. There was nothing in here, no sign of human life. Not for a while, anyway. The only footprints in the dust were his. His and maybe those of a few raccoons. He couldn't help but gawk around, because a house, empty like this, was seriously eerie. No curtains, only sheets of spiderweb dangling from the ceiling, no furniture but an overturned crate haphazardly left in the middle of the floor. There was a nerve-bending shaft of bluish light illuminating the back hallway, rising dust visible in the gleam through an open door, and something about it made the hair on the back of his neck arch up. He shook it off - just a spooky empty house, right?

Maybe there was just something weird about an empty house. Too many shadows in empty corners, too many memories. Maybe not his memories, but it still gave him chills. Maybe looking the wrong way into that empty corner woke something up, something he told himself he'd put to bed a while ago.

He jumped at an impact from outside, and realized Banri had pounded on the front door. "Quit playin' with yourself and unlock the door, asshole, it's freezing out here!" His voice was muffled by the wood and walls, but the door had rattled and now sat just askew. Gojyo went to the front of the house and threw the door wide, and Banri stepped in, shaking off the chills.

"I think you fucked up the hinges." Gojyo squinted through the dimness to see that one of the screws was off-kilter, poking just out.

"Eh, I can fix it." Banri dropped his travel-all in the middle of the floor. "If I feel like it." He stuffed his hands into his coat pockets and huffed condensation. "Shit, s'just as cold in here as out there. Lemme see if I can find a radiator or something." He gestured around the room, but quickly stuffed his hand back into his pocket. "Go dust some shit off."

Gojyo shrugged, and started using the ragged edge of his sleeve to dust the kitchen counters, but as Banri trudged into the hall, Gojyo got a chill down his spine and turned to follow him. "Hey, so, we're in the house, now what?"

"What else?" Banri sniffed, and Gojyo huffed, because he hadn't a clue. Banri had just started talking one day about a little shack in the woods where nobody lived, and how damn bad he wanted to bust in, but he never made clear just what he wanted out of it. Gojyo had thought he had just wanted to liberate anything good left behind, maybe some cash or coins, knives, pots, and pans they could sell off. One of Banri's friends had said they could strip the copper wires and pipes, because copper was just about worth it's weight in gold. But Banri had blown every suggestion off. Gojyo was still fishing for an actual answer.

"I dunno. Ain't nothin' to steal. Maybe the pipes're worth-"

"We're gonna wanna leave the pipes where they are." Banri had pushed the doors open (a tiny bathroom, a bedroom, a closet), but sniffed a little. "Gotta be a basement 'round here." He moved back into the main room with Gojyo at his heels like a puppy. "Here we go." He dusted a few floorboards off to reveal a trapdoor. "Kid, I got a torch in my bag, light 'er up and pass 'er down."

Gojyo quickly found the flashlight, cranked the batteries, and handed it down the ladder. "What's down there? Buried treasure or some shit?" Gojyo rolled his eyes, and Banri did too.

"No, stupid, the generator's down here! There's a little fuel left in it, but it'll last 'til I can get to town for gas." He crouched down. "Water's here too. Let's hope the well ain't run dry." Banri grunted as he fidgeted with something, and Gojyo practically felt the house rumble, coming alive under his feet as the power came on, and he heard the radiators hiss into action around him. He popped his head out of the trapdoor, cobwebs and dust in his hair, and grinned at Gojyo. "How 'bout it, kid? We get a couch and a bed, we clean the fucker up, and all of a sudden, it's home sweet home!"

Gojyo, stricken with disbelief, just laughed. "Get real!"

"I'm bein' real, moron!" Banri clambered up out of the hole, lanky limbs briefly uncoordinated as he staggered up to a stand, but set his hands on his hips. "What makes you think we can't?"

"Doesn't it belong to someone else?"

Banri scoffed and rolled his eyes. "They ain't here to stop us, are they? What's stoppin' you? C'mon, kid, it's cold as balls out there, everyone deserves somewhere to go, even if that means takin' it." He shrugged, his eyelids drooping as he thought. "After all, you've had plenty of shit taken from you, and ain't nobody given a shit."

Gojyo started to open his big mouth to answer, but his eyes fell on the empty, dim corner of the house. He could almost see shadows coating it, looming in empty spaces, but he blinked, and it cleared away. Banri, meanwhile, was gesturing around and ranting on, as eager as a little kid, "You and me, we're gonna fix this fuckin' shack up. We're gonna dust shit down, and get some furniture and shit, and we're gonna put beer in the icebox and get the place nice and warm, and you an' me, we'll be cozy here like two nuts in a sack, you got me?"

Gojyo wanted to laugh, because shit, he was a teenager and that shit was funny, but Banri meant it, and Gojyo had no idea when someone last made him a promise that he thought they might keep. It was easy, too easy to believe Banri, that this house could feel like home. That he could have a home again. But Banri's word had proven bond so far, and who was he to say that this wouldn't work out? He didn't have any reason to question it, so he wouldn't.

That what just was life with Banri was like.

"Guess we're home for the holidays," he chuckled through a grin, and the room seemed to light up around them.


End file.
